The Times of London had an interesting article that exposed the fact that there was a Belgian PR team in place in Tbilisi providing reporters with information:

"Tiny Georgia was far more adroit in the battle for public opinion than its Russian adversary. It had set up the media centre to allow instant reporting from close to the front line, while the Russian Army tightly controlled access to South Ossetia, making it difficult to report its actions. Indeed, if the Georgian Army had been as aggressive as its public relations campaign then the war for South Ossetia might have ended very differently."

...........

"Mr Saakashvili was flanked by the Georgian and European Union flags, even though Georgia is not a member. The message was clear – Georgia was aligning itself with the West against its former Soviet master.

As foreign correspondents poured into Tbilisi a team of Belgian PR advisers launched a slick operation to keep them updated with e-mail alerts detailing the latest alleged aggressions by Russia and the Georgian Government’s reaction. On Sunday, for example, more than 20 e-mails went out to shape Georgia’s message that Russia had launched an invasion.

Some of the claims veered into outright exaggeration – such as stating that Russian jets were “intensively bombing Tbilisi” or that Russian troops had taken Gori – but the 24-hour news culture meant that many organisations repeated them without independent verification. "

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article4518254.ece

MUST WATCH: CNN captures Saakashvili eating his own tie. This guy is seriously unstable. Echoes of Chalabi, anyone?

http://wonkette.com/401976/georgian-president-eats-his-tie-ha-ha

On CNN yesterday, Richard Holbrooke (from Tbilisi) was voiciferously defending Saakshvili and claiming that he couldn't possibly have planned the attack on South Ossetia because he was at a fat farm in Italy at the time.

The rest of the world regards Saakashvili as a twit. According to a recent Israeli column, he volunteered to come to Haifa during the stupid summer war of '06. Hezbollah was rocketing the damn place at the time, killing rail workers and barely missing a chemical storage tank.

aa.

Thanksahelluvalot! ;>)

For your link as I followed Israeli net security expert poobah Gadi Evron and was sucked into the formerly unkown world of netbots...........

Evron has a blog discussing of the recent cyberevents re Georgia and links to others in his line of work who have also been tracking them.

A general consensus seems to be that no one knows who started the attacks (not likely the Russian government) and that the campaign went viral among volunteer partisans.

Fun stuff.

Gadi Evron's blog:
http://www.circleid.com/members/1797/

More fun:
http://www.shadowserver.org/wiki/pmwiki.php?n=Calendar.20080813

Enjoy.

Rick Warren is working hard to fill the shoes of Jerry Falwell. I was amazed at how Condoleezza Rich just stood there, while Saakashvili ridiculed the West for allowing the Russian Bear to wake from hibernation. He wasn’t completely wrong about that, but he is playing the US like a fiddle!

What would Jesus think of "Pastor" Warren?

I still firmly belive that a lot this Georgia/Russia thing was cooked up by the McCain people. I mean Scheunemann is a lob for Georgia, McCain gets to puff himself up even more and try to look "presidential" and tough and NOW Warren says that Georgia's Saakashvili called him. He's a liar. The whole McCain campaign is lying about EVERYTHING